About Those Meters . . .

Due to a case of gimpiness that ended in a sprained foot and black and blue toe, I grabbed a taxi today. I totally forgot that this is May 1, Meter Day. Predictably, my driver did not have a meter installed. Then again, my ride took me just over a zone border, and he charged me for only for a one zone trip. When I offered a $20 bill to cover my fare, the driver, who didn't have change, suggested I just give him whatever small bills I had -- a total of $5. I have to admit that under a meter system, a driver would be far less willing to let a passenger escape for any payment under fare. I never thought of that angle. Then again, my ride might have only come to $5 anyway using the new time and distance meters.

Easy Activism: Taxi Meters

As I've stated in a previous post I believe that DC cab rates are already too high. The currently proposed time and distance meter rates have the potential to be even higher by an average of $0.97. Ugh. In any event, DC cab riders would pay the highest taxi fares in the nation if the proposed rates go through.

The Washington Post has already run a story estimating fares here. According to the organization DC Residents for Reasonable Taxi Fares, the Post will run a story in the coming week that will feature the organization's viewpoint that rates are too high. Local WJLA news has also featured the efforts of DC Residents for Reasonable Taxi Fares.

If you happen to agree that rates are too high, the simplest thing you can do is to sign the petition here. When you sign electronically, you will also be able to add a comment to the Mayor. As of last week's round-table held by Jim Graham, there were 850 signatures and 42 pages of public comments. You can also send a form letter to Mayor Fenty, the DC City Council, and DC Taxicab Commission simultaneously through this website. I have an unproven belief that customizing the letter and subject line may be more effective in grabbing the attention of our leadership.

Jim Graham has oversight of the Taxi Cab Commission, so you might want to target him personally for your correspondence. His contact information can be found here. If you live in Cardozo/Shaw, Adams Morgan, or Columbia Heights, as constituents of Ward 1, Graham may be even more likely to pay heed to your concerns. As the Mayor's office has proposed the new cab rules, you may want to copy them on any correspondence that you send to Graham or other Council members.

The number of DC citizens who make their voices heard on this issue is very important. Jim Graham seems to believe that he represents the wishes of all 6500 cab drivers in the city by supporting zone meters and threatening to legislate this issue. The Mayor's office as well appears to be supporting drivers by setting the drop fee so high and maintaining current surcharges. Commissioner Sandra Seegars of ANC 8E has a petition stating that 97 percent of Ward 8 residents support fixed rates. Those in favor of time and distance meters as well as lower fares will have to respond in numbers sufficient to counter the cab drivers and the approximately 71,000 residents of Ward 8. I also believe that we can come up with more convincing arguments than the opposition is using —the Mayor is overstepping his authority; we need to protect the business interests of cab drivers (who may or may not be DC residents) over the cab riding public; neither residents nor cab drivers have a problem with current fares.

Please take 5 minutes from your home or office computer to sign a petition and/or send an email.

Dirty Fighting Aginst Fair Fares

First of all, I want to offer my sincere apologies to Prince of Petworth. I had no idea that he had also posted a pic of Run-D.M.C. this week until Mr. 14th & You told me about an hour ago.

On to cabs . . .

I sat through 12 citizen comment periods and one statement from Peter Nickles, the General Counsel to the Mayor. Around 6:15 I just couldn't take it anymore. I'm surprised that I made it that long given that the first word I heard while walking in during the middle of one person's testimony was "gentrification."

A Little Preamble:
The Mayor's office has proposed time and distance meter regulation based on a number of surveys and citizen feedback. This proposed legislation will go into a 60 day public comment period tomorrow. Why do I think that Jim Graham was just trying to be first into the fray by holding his hearing this afternoon?

Community Testimony
Of the 13 people whom I saw speak only two were cogent, a representative of DC Residents for Reasonable Taxi Fares and Peter Nickles who as an appointee has full grasp of what Fenty is trying to achieve. Both of the above parties are in favor of time and distance meters. One other gentleman was also in favor of meters; he kindly summarized his AU thesis citing 1930's court precedents. Let's just put him in the less cogent category.

Graham's Real Agenda
Jim Graham wants zone meters. His logic seems to be that everyone likes the zone system and the fares, but if we just had a more transparent way of tracking fares, everyone would be happy. He also made a vague threat that if he and the Mayor's Office could not come to agreement that Graham would spearhead legislating the issue.

Graham's cab driver friends, in between making some odd and unrelated and incoherent comments, also seemed to be in favor of zone meters. If you would like to test the zone meter experience for yourself, Yellow Cab has already installed them.

The Riders' Conundrum
Graham has couched this entire debate as not about money; "There's no rebellion about current fares." Apparently, even the cab drivers aren't claiming that they want to make more money. (Again, this is Graham's summary of his understanding of the testimony.)

DC Residents for Reasonable Taxi Fares counters that logic. As of this evening, they had 850 signatures on their petition which had only circulated for 24 hours. They also have 42 pages of citizen comments that have been entered in the record. This group's concern is that on average the time and distance meters fares will be $0.97 higher than the zone fares. In Virginia, they say that riders will be paying 20% less than in DC and 32% less during rush hour.

If you, like me, have a problem with the drop fee and the surcharges, you need to let Graham and the rest of the City Council know. Graham is also planning on hosting other similar forums in locations outside of the Wilson building; we can't let the cab drivers overrun other residents at these meetings.

Odd Comments and Observations
Aside from the usual honorifics Graham was also called "Congressman Graham" and "Counsel Graham" by some of the cab drivers.

From a cab driver who had already spoken well past his alloted time: "Anyone waiting on a cab at two in the morning isn't gonna give a doggone if the cab is running on two wheels."

From Sandra Seegars, 8E-02 ANC commissioner:"Meters legitimize cheating." Um, isn't the cheating part of the equation what brought us to this round-table discussion?

One of my favorite semi-circles of reason: no DC cab can presently accommodate electric wheelchairs —> cab drivers need to be grandfathered in to hack licenses with a face value of $200,000 —> that $20000 asset will allow them to secure loans for . . . —> wheelchair lifts. Oh yes, Mayor Fenty is arrogant, and somehow not having fixed zone rates would prevent cab drivers from providing two years of tax returns to financing institutions in order to obtain . . . wheelchair accessible cabs.

Be a Good Citizen

The ANC 2F meeting is tomorrow night. You can view the agenda here. There's nothing too exciting on the table, but it's always good to hear about public safety and DDOT issues.

Jim Graham is holding public round-table on the proposed taxi cab rates. If you want to be a party of the fray, the meeting will be held Thursday of this week at 2 p.m. in the Wilson Building council chambers (135o Pennsylvania Ave. NW). The scheduled time is clearly ridiculous, but some predict that the conversation will go well into the evening hours. Yes, you will be able to see it in the news and read about it in the papers the next day. But it would really be great if we could show our displeasure by packing the chamber with DC residents. Show up whenever you can.

Public hearings on the Metro fare increases are set to begin next week. Hearings will be held in DC on Wednesday, November 13th and Thursday, November 14th. The full hearing schedule can be found here.

Through November 19th, there will be a Ward 3 can food drive at the Chevy Chase Community Center.

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Congrats to Knee Deep in Mud (perhaps too graphic for your office or your children) and Off Seventh for drawing attention to the continuing issues of prostitution and drugs throughout northwest. Though I don't think that their blogs were specifically mentioned, Fox 5 local news picked up the story. It's a bummer that this garbage still happens so flagrantly, but it's great that DC blogs are filling in reporting gaps that the newspapers and local TV don't cover.

Rants

All of a sudden, cab meters suck. With the proposed drop rate and the $1 rush hour surcharge, I could actually pay about the same rate for a ride into Dupont. Last month, I did the fare math here. The Washington Post estimates that a one mile trip would be about $7 and a 2-3 mile trip would be about $10.33. I think I'll just get my exercise and budget an extra 20 to 35 minutes to reach close-by destinations.
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Metro wants more people to use SmarTrip because it saves them money. I like the SmarTrip in theory, and our household owns three. The trouble is that the microchip inside the card shifts around and sometimes spontaneously stops working. Mr 14th & You was instructed by one Metro employee to flex the card while scanning it. This sorta works some of the time. Despite the advice we currently have two busted SmartTrips and one that I call the G-spot card. I suppose one day I will make it to Metro Center during business hours to rectify the situation.
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Council member Jim Graham annoys me. He has never once passed up a single press opportunity, and I am now tired of hearing him talk, especially since he frequently has nothing useful to contribute.
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Apparently the DC Council has decided that the Greater Southeast Hospital takeover deal might not be so great. Some Council members say that they were not given adequate information about Specialty Hospital's finances. It's their job to find these things out. And if the city's CFO raises a red flag, delay the vote instead of kvetching about it later.
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I welcome GW and Georgetown students to DC. It's great that they have fun here while spending whatever money they have left after tuition payments. I also like the friendly student staff at the West End Trader Joe's. Yet some students are so distracted by shopping with their 4 roommates or talking on their cell phones that they form giant embolisms in the narrow aisles during peak shopping hours. I am about to promote having the inept shoppers confined to their campuses.
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The following are issues for me only because I am silly enough to own a car in the city. I therefore acknowledge my culpability in these situations:

While I was driving on Wisconsin Avenue in Cathedral Heights this afternoon, an ambulance passed down the street. Both of the traffic lanes were packed with cars stopped at a light. I always thought that it was not just my job to yield right of way to an emergency vehicle, but to get the hell out of the way -- turning down a side street or pulling into an intersection if I could safely do so. My spot in traffic just isn't as important as the life of someone who may be critically ill or injured.

Traffic in the adjacent lane had nowhere to go, so I pulled into the curb lane to make some space for everyone to move over. No one got out of the ambulance's way. But what I found really heart warming is that a car tried to prevent me from merging back into traffic once the ambulance had passed. I was signaling and gently pulling into the traffic lane, but she inched up and tried to block me. Losing patience I gunned it and cut the other car off while waving a middle finger. Then I looked in my rear view mirror I saw that I had just flipped off an elderly woman. Is it bad that I feel no remorse?

I drive a manual transmission. If you want to get within two inches of my rear bumper while stopped on a hill, that's your choice. If I then deliberately let my clutch out slowly, that's my choice.

The Sears Tire and Auto shop at Montgomery Mall is beyond awful. I got a flat in Chevy Chase so I limped into the closest shop possible, theirs. The tire salesmen try to cross sell you on a bunch of pointless services, bleeding you $15 at a time. Right now I am in the midst of a three month battle to get them to replace decorative lug nut covers (little hexagonal pieces that fit inside the centers of myhubcaps) that they lost. After promising to order the covers and install them, today Sears suggested that I 1) go to the dealership, 2) have the dealer order the parts, 3) return to the dealership to pick up the covers, and 4) then take the receipt to Sears in Bethesda for reimbursement. After that suggestion I had an out-of-body experience which I believe resulted in me expressing displeasure by calling the sales guy a "pain in my a$$."

Stuff You Oughta Know About

In the past week, there have been quite a few news items that impact our neighborhood. Unfortunately, I’ve been a little slow to aggregate and post them all. Below is a summary of some stories you might want to read for yourselves.

Embassy Tour This Weekend
This coming Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. you may take a self-guided tour of some of the embassies and ambassadors’ residences in Kalorama. This event, the 23^rd Annual Kalorama House and Embassy Tour, is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson House. If you would like to participate, tickets are available for $25 in advance. Visit link above or call 202-387-4062 x18 for information.

Convention Center Hotel
The planned 1,400 room convention center hotel at 9^th and Mass. may ever materialize. Though the developer RLJ states that they are still interested in the project if further investigation reveals it to be “economically viable,” Council member Jack Evans has already declared the hotel DOA. Steven Pearlstein also seems happy to ring the death knell. However, others such as OffSeventh are voicing their extreme displeasure at the near collapse of the hotel plans.

Streetcars
The September 5^th issue of the Dupont Current ran an article about DC’s streetcar plans. Unfortunately, the Current does not make articles available online. The gist is that the Sierra Club has written to Mayor Fenty to express their disappointment at the pace of the streetcar line construction. They characterize the DDOT schedule, which calls for construction in Anacostia to begin next year, as “too little, too late.” (H Street construction is to begin once the Anacostia test case is complete.)

The Sierra Club supported a 2004 proposal calling for 40 to 50 miles of streetcar lines. However, they were disappointed by a 2005 document which they believe sets a much longer timeline for the project. DDOT has a fairly sound response; they say that they have spent the past three years conducting environmental studies, obtaining federal funding, and soliciting construction bids. DDOT also says that streetcars are one of their top priorities right now. Though I do understand the government processes and I do not think that the current timeline is unreasonable, I am hopeful that the Sierra Club’s pressure can help nudge the streetcar construction along a little faster.

No Decision on Cab Meters
The taxicab commission voted yesterday to . . . punt the meter vs. zone issue to Mayor Fenty. Fenty must now act before the October 17 deadline for responding to U.S. Senator Carl Levin’s demand to create an official meter policy. Council Member Jim Graham, in typical style, has pledged his involvement by convening his own task force to review taxi regulations. The Post covers the story here.

Leroy Thorpe
In a September 5^th article, reporter Erik Wemple of the CityPaper enlightened Washington Post reporter Omar Fekeiki and editor Carol Morello on Leroy Thorpe. The Post had reported in glowing terms about Thorpe’s Muslim crime fighting group while neglecting to learn about all he has done to divide/harm/antagonize his neighborhood. The Post also skipped a key statistic: the number of violent crimes in the patrolled area over the past two months is equal to the number reported for the same period last year.